Cosmic Horror and a Crime Procedural: CJ Leede's Headlights

This week, I talk with CJ Leede about her new horror novel Headlights!

Listen to hear about:

• How CJ originally planned to become a medieval historian, but after a professor helped her discover storytelling was what she wanted to pursue.
• How Headlights began with the idea of people waking up on the side of a highway wearing the skin of strangers, and evolved into a story about grief, mortality, family legacy, and the search for meaning.
• Why Leede treats setting as a character, using Colorado's beauty, danger, wildlife, and landscapes as metaphors for the novel's larger themes about life, death, and the unknown.
• How the novel contains investigative thriller and horror elements, but is really a book about confronting sadness, loss, and the things we cannot outrun within ourselves.
• Why horror can uniquely encompass mysteries, romance, literary fiction, supernatural stories, social commentary, and psychological explorations, making it one of the broadest and most creative genres available.

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Gare Billings @gareindeedreads

Steph Lauer @books.in.badgerland

Halley Sutton @halleysutton25

Brian Watson @readingwithbrian

MacKenzie Green @missusa2mba

Erin Ashley @bellametaphor